Copywriting For Beginners: The Ultimate Guide

In today’s digital age, every business needs high-quality and engaging content to increase brand awareness and boost revenue.

It’s stressful to always come up with something that’ll make customers buy. That’s why the demand for copywriters is at an all-time high.

Now, to write amazing copy, you need to be on your A-game. And the thing is, writing amazing copy is not hard.

If you’d like to start your copywriting career, you have the ultimate copywriting tips for beginners to get you started on the right path.

But before we get to that, let’s get clear on the fundamentals of copywriting.

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting means writing content to promote a product or service.

The main aim of copywriting is to persuade and influence the reader to take a specific action like buying or subscribing to the product. The copywriter is meant to make the product as persuasive as possible.

There are many forms of copy you can use to persuade your readers. Some of them include:

• Emails
• Sales letters
• E-books
• Website Copy
• White papers
• Blogs

Copywriting includes a strong call to action. Plus, it’s meant to be persuasive as opposed to advertising writing.

But copywriting is more than meets the eye. Great copywriting tells a compelling story. It uses psychological triggers to pull on the emotional strings of your reader to trigger their decision-making process.

Copywriting sells emotions, not products and services.

Copywriting for Beginners: The Ultimate Strategies for Effective Copywriting

Businesses all over the world need good copywriters. This is because an effective copy is better than any other form of advertising. This is also why copywriters are in demand today.

Copywriting is a skill that anybody can master. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fresh graduate or you’re looking to change careers.

If you want to become a copywriter and learn how to write an effective copy, here is the best guide to effective copywriting.

1. Read… a lot

To become a good writer, you must first be a good reader. This is because when you read, you learn how thoughts, messages, and opinions are passed across. This is helpful when you write because you’ll understand what words or phrases best fit into a sentence to make it more attractive.

Reading will help improve your writing skills, thereby improving your communication skills.

2. Know what you’re writing about

This means knowing your client, their products, and services.

When you’re embarking on a project, the first thing you should do is do thorough research. Knowing your client and their business will let you write an effective and well-informed copy. Know what they’re about. Their mission, vision, and goals.

It’s also important that you learn more about the product or service you want to promote. If you can, learn everything you can about the business. It will help you write a copy that cuts through the noise and grabs your reader’s attention.

3. Know who you’re writing to

While it’s important to know about your client’s products and services, it is equally important to know who you’re writing to. This means knowing your target audience.

Before you write a lick of copy, you must know who you’re writing to, or else, your copy will fall on deaf ears. Gather as much information as you can on your target audience.

To be able to get in-depth information on your target audience, you must know how to conduct thorough research on the customers. When you research your audience and write a piece of copy tailored towards that market, your copy will convert better.

4. Know your competitors

Researching your clients and customers will help you write persuasive copy. But you can take it one step further. Your client’s competitors.

Researching your client’s competitors can open your eyes to loopholes that you can take advantage of. It will also give you inspiration to write better copy for your client or your business.

5. Be believable

Nothing spoils a copy more than exaggeration.

Listen, the ultimate aim of copywriting is to get the customer to take a particular action like buying a product or subscribing to a newsletter. The copy must be convincing enough to persuade the reader to action. To do this, use powerful words and a persuasive tone.

Now, because the customer will be investing their hard-earned money, you must make your claims genuine. Don’t overuse the persuasive tone and power words or else, you will annoy your reader. A mistake newbie copywriters make is to use imposing language or words. This only tends to alienate your reader. Remember, persuade, don’t impose.

6. Start with a formula

There are many copywriting formulas that you can use to write persuasive copy. Formulas like AIDA (Advantage – Interest – Desire – Action) and PAS (Problem – Agitate – Solution) are the most popular. Using these formulas helps you take the prospect from the awareness stage to the point where they take action.

Other formulas are FAB (Features – Advantages – Benefits), BAB (Before – After – Bridge), and the 4Cs (Clear, Concise, Credible, and Compelling)

7. Keep it conversational

How you phrase certain words, and the language you use depends largely on your target audience. For instance, if your target audience is teenagers, using trendy words and an informal tone will most likely catch their attention. But if you’re writing a B2B copy, being formal and professional will get the job done.

However, it’s also important to write as if you’re involved in a conversation between two people. This is the best way to make your copy understandable and readable. Don’t use jargon and too many technical words. Instead, use simple words and phrases, even idioms that everyone understands.

8. Jump on trends

Trends are the easiest way to grab people’s attention. This is more true if your copy will be published on social media platforms. With the growing popularity of social media, using trends to grab attention has become popular.

Platforms like Twitter and Instagram can help you keep up with trends.

Jump on the trends bandwagon when you think the trend is relevant to the business or service you’re writing for.

Understand that although using trends can be good, make sure that whichever trend you choose to jump on must be relevant to the copywriting topic.

Jokes and memes don’t hurt too. But use them sparingly.

9. Keep it simple

Anybody can become a good copywriter. But not everyone can be great at it. Great copywriters know how to take complicated things and make them simple enough for the average reader to understand. If your reader doesn’t understand what you’re talking about, how do you expect them to take action?

It’s easy to use big words to sound smart when you’re a new copywriter. However, most people would prefer conversational and simple language over big, impressive words any day.

Use simple words in your copy so your reader doesn’t have to be reaching for the dictionary. Big words might make you sound smart, but it’s not persuading anyone to buy.

10. Use power words

Power words are words that convince prospects to take action. This is exactly why you should sprinkle them in your copy. These power words can be used anywhere to trigger both negative and positive emotional responses.

Below are some power words you can use in your copywriting:

• Caution
• Beware
• Danger
• Hack
• Fail
• Amazing
• Blissful
• Epic
• Empower
• Happy
• Flawless
• Captivating
• Allure
• Intriguing
• Magnetic
• Misleading
• Discount
• Hurry
• Authentic
• Guaranteed
• Confidential

These words arouse anger, greed, fear, and other strong emotions in your readers. Use them for the same reason. But don’t overuse them.

Source

11. Don’t mess up the grammar

This goes without saying. Spelling or grammatical errors in your copy can have a negative effect on your objective. When people find errors in your copy, they start having negative perceptions of your brand.

Don’t get me wrong, nobody is perfect. There is no way you will always write copy without errors, especially if you write many copies every week. But one or two grammatical errors buried in over 3000-plus words are fine. A grammatical or spelling error on a homepage o sales email won’t be forgiven.

So don’t rush through the process. Use grammar and editing software like Grammarly. Read it out loud. Double-check and triple-check it. I make it a rule to read my copy, especially the short ones, four times before publishing it. You can also have someone else proofread it.

12. Always add a strong call to action

Writing great copy is one half of the battle. The next step is to tell the audience what to do.

What is the main goal of your copy? Is it to get them to subscribe to a service or buy a product? Whatever it is, you must include a strong call to action.

Whatever you want people to do, make sure you tell them. Don’t make them guess. Do you want them to buy? Add a clear and strong call to action at the end of your copy. This simple act can boost your conversion rate.

13. Write with SEO in mind

This is for website copy.

If you’re writing a blog post, make sure you keep SEO at the back of your mind and make it search-friendly. use keywords that the search engines will love.

There are many factors that go into ranking your content, and keywords are just one of them. Even though SEO is important, it isn’t the be-all and end-all. So, don’t force keywords into your copy if it will hurt them.

14. Don’t beat around the bush

Do straight to the point. You must be able to pass your message across in as few words as possible. Use short sentences and paragraphs. Also, avoid fluff.

Learn how to write copy that’s punchy and to the point. Readers get distracted and intimidated when they are presented with long sentences and paragraphs.

15. Start with a strong lead

The best copy starts with a great lead. It doesn’t matter if it’s a headline, subheadline, or introduction, you need to find a way to capture and hold your reader’s attention.

A great way you can do this is by using a statistic or fact. These always seem to entice readers to read more.

The aim of your header is to get the reader to read the subheadline. The purpose of the subheadline is to get the reader to read the first line. And the aim of the first line is to get the reader to read the second line. And so on.

Therefore, if your lead is not enticing enough to get the reader down the line, the rest of your copy doesn’t matter because no one will read it.

16. Focus on benefits

One mistake new copywriters make is to go on and on about the features of a product or service. They completely ignore the benefits of these offerings. Writing like this doesn’t convert anyone.

Highlighting the benefits of a product or service persuades the reader to take action than just talking about its features.

Therefore, whenever you write anything, write it in a way that highlights the benefits the reader will get.

For example, don’t say, “Our car is fast“. Instead, say “You get to your loving family faster“.

17. Write more

As a new copywriter, you obviously don’t have the skills to compete with top copywriters with years in the game. So, how can you write copy so well that you become one of the great copywriters?

Write more.

Many people will tell you to read more books on copywriting. That’s alright. But once you’ve read those books. Go and practice what you’ve read.

The secret to becoming great at anything is to do that thing.

Therefore, if you want to get better at writing. Just write.

18. Learn storytelling

Facts tell. Stories sell.

The best way to make your copywriting more compelling is to tell your readers a story. I use this method a lot in my copywriting newsletter. And people love it.

The story doesn’t have to be a long one. It just needs a start, a middle part, and an ending part.

Captivate your readers with the intro by introducing the problem. Explain the problem in the middle. Finally, end the story with your solution.

Final Thoughts on Copywriting for Beginners

As mentioned before, the best way to improve your copywriting skills is to write every day. Every piece of copy you write won’t be great. But with practice, you’ll get better.

As a new copywriter, start with short-form copy before you move on to larger projects. Also, start with headlines, value propositions, and product descriptions before you move on to writing white papers and sales letters.

Remember, be conversational.  Write just like you talk. If you have ten hours to come up with copy, use the first eight to do your research.

Also, start a swipe file. Whenever you see a great copy, save it in your swipe file so that you can study it and see how it was written. Then copy it.

Finally, if you’re struggling, use a copywriting formula to guide you through the process of writing amazing copy.